Molto cantabile

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The Voice of the Violin
by Andrea Camilleri.
La voce del violino (1997)
translated by Stephen Sartarelli.
Picador, 2006.

The fourth title in Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano (il Commissario Montalbano) series is as good as its predecessors in terms of wit, humour, story, characterisation and local colour.

Set at a time when mobile phones and computers were making an impact on everyday policing – in Sicily as much as anywhere else – the focus is nevertheless on patient sleuthing and careful profiling during the course of a murder investigation.

And because we observe everything entirely through the eyes of Salvo Montalbano of Vigàta the author plays fairly with us readers whilst simultaneously revealing the inspector’s strengths and foibles; in this way we know that he means well even if he bends the rules so that justice may eventually be done.

Queen of air and darkness

Hieronymus Bosch: ‘The Last Judgement’ (detail) c 1500

The Cockatrice Boys by Joan Aiken.
Edited by David G Hartwell,
illustrated by Jason Van Hollander.
Tor Books, Tom Docherty Associates, 1996 (1993).

Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,
‘O young man, O my slayer,
To-morrow you shall die.’ […]

— A E Housman

The ozone layer helps to protect both the environment and life on earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Through the 1980s and 90s however the depletion of stratospheric ozone, creating holes in the layer over the poles, increased alarmingly, only significantly lessening at the turn of the millennium, largely due to the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances in manufacture.

This comic horror fantasy first appeared in 1993; mostly set in a United Kingdom fast descending into chaos made possible by the enlarging ozone holes, the story rapidly takes us not along conventional lines associated with speculative fiction but into curious byways such as only the creative imagination of the likes of Joan Aiken could conceive.

The reader is advised to buckle up for the ride, because it’s certain to be bumpy.

A feud in Vendale

Dam of Scar House Reservoir, Nidderdale, England (2014) by Kreuzschnabel. CC BY-SA 3.0

Ravensgill by William Mayne.
Hodder Modern Classics,
Hodder Children’s Books, 2000 (1970).

There are untold links between Vendale’s New Scar House and Ravensgill farm, secrets that caused a rift in the 1920s, forty-six years before, a death that looked like murder but may not have been.

Young teens Judith Chapman in Vendale and Bob White at Ravensgill are suddenly aware of missives flying between farms from an older generation but nobody will say what or why, and even their older siblings discourage any questions.

It will take a swimming rivalry between Bob and Judith’s brother to launch a simmering feud from low-level bullying into violence before the secrets of a Yorkshire Dales moor, mire and reservoir suggest a rapprochement may be possible.

The breath of weariness

‘Madame Catherine Bruguière, née Sardon’ (1796) by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835). Bristol Museum and Art Gallery: photo C A Lovegrove.

Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson. 
Little Black Classics No. 19,
Penguin Books, 2015 (1885).

‘The air of these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the medicines in the world.’

Olalla

This strange Gothick tale of forbidden love, set during an unnamed period of strife in 19th-century Spain, was written soon after Stevenson moved with his wife Fanny and stepson to Bournemouth for his health, around the time Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published.

The narrative of an unnamed English army officer recuperating from unspecified battle trauma in an isolated residencia seems to have its origins partly in real life and partly in a nightmare Stevenson had had, which he then struggled to render as a novella or longish short story.

The result is a curious composition which to me seems strong on atmosphere but not always consistent or convincing as narrative. And as it turns out unforeseen consequences result from the officer’s ‘renewed’ blood when he stays in the mountain retreat.